More than just a number: Re-Humanizing the Tourism Academy
news / May 14, 2025
About the event
The academic system we are inheriting is no longer sustainable and has reduced the soul of academia into numbers on a spreadsheet. The business jargon nowadays proliferates the academic discourse and places impossible expectations on scholar productivity. The result is an increasingly competitive and far-from collaborative environment that impacts the wellbeing of the academic community and the way we treat, care, and value one another. To paraphrase Hamlet: “something is rotten in the state of academia” and urgent action is required.
- Organized by the Geographies of Leisure & Tourism Research Group (GLTRG), Tourism Education Futures Initiative (TEFI), TourismRESET, Critical Tourism Studies (CTS) and the Leisure Studies Association (LSA)
- Sunday, 6 July 2025 16:00 – 22:00 BST and Monday, 7 July 2025 08:40 – 17:00 BST
- Location: York St John Creative Centre, York St John University and online
Registration link:
Current shifts and changes in the academic system are exacerbating precariousness and competitiveness at the expense of collegiality, collaboration, and an ethic of care. Undeniably, there is an urgent need to find ways we as scholars may empathically engage and build rapport with one another. The goal is to achieve a supportive, collegial, sustainable and caring academic system nurturing present and future scholars in leisure and tourism.
Our third annual Symposium More than just a number: Re-humanizing the Tourism Academy builds upon the notion of socializing tourism as defined by Freya Higgins-Desbiolles. The symposium calls for a reframing of tourism for the empowerment and wellbeing of communities. The tourism academy as a community is also in need of a reform that enhances wellbeing, collegiate academic citizenship and equity. We believe that there is an urgent need to embrace a socializing turn within the context of the tourism academy and adopt it as a compass guiding scholars on how to engage with their communities, with their research, and the academic community at large.
In consideration of the neoliberal structures framing our universities attempting to confine us, the aim of the symposium is to invite graduate students, early career researchers, established scholars and community partners to collectively reflect on our resistance, and advocacy for supporting a new model. Specifically, we will discuss the importance of establishing, growing, and cultivating awareness, protection in allyship, flipping metric-focused narratives into healthy and co-created counter-narratives in the pursuit of balance and modelling slowness, and opportunities to generate impactful and meaningful legacies.
Programme
Sunday, July 6th, 2025 (on campus only)
- 16:00 – 17:30: Ghost Walk in York
- 17:30 – 18:30: Meeting at the Eagle and Child Pub, 9 High Petergate, York, North Yorkshire, YO1 7EH
- 18:30 – 20:00: Dinner at the Eagle and Child Pub
Monday, July 7th, 2025 (on campus or online)
- 8:40 – 9:10: Registration
- 9:10 – 9:20: Welcome and greetings from the organising committee
- 9:20 – 10:00: Keynote by Prof. Freya Higgins-Desbiolles (pre-recorded)
- 10:00 – 10:20: Follow-up discussion with the audience
- 10:20 – 10:40: Break
- 10:40 – 11:40: Panel 1: S*it has to change: for a flourishing tourism academy Panellists: Dr Kai Sean Lee, Dr Subedi Swechchha, Dr Nancy McGehee, Dr Stefanie Benjamin, Dr Karla Boluk
- Moderator: Dr Jenny Hall
- 11:40 – 13:00: Lunch break and informal networking
- 13:00 – 14:00: Panel 2: The dimensions of the socializing turn in tourism Panellists: Dr Bailey Ashton Adie, Dr Alberto Amore, Dr Richard Aquino, Prof. Sandro Carnicelli and Dr Barbara Grabher
- Moderator: Dr Brendan Paddison
- 14:00 – 14:20: Break
- 14:20 – 17:30: Co-created activity: Towards a Manifesto for a Humane Tourism Academy
- 17:30 – 17:40 Closing of the Symposium and see you in 2026!
Post Symposium activity (on campus only) 17:40 – 18:00 City wall walk and gathering at the Eagle and Child Pub, 9 High Petergate, York, North Yorkshire, YO1 7EH
Organizing Committee: Dr Alberto Amore (University of Oulu); Dr Karla Boluk (University of Waterloo); Dr Jenny Hall (York St John University); Dr Brendan Paddison (York St John University); Dr Tijana Rakic (De Monfort University); Dr Stefanie Benjamin (The University of Tennessee); Dr Bailey Ashton Adie (University of Oulu); Prof. Kellee Caton (Thompson Rivers University); and Katharina Bürger (University of Brighton).
